Actually thinking a bit further into this, I kind of agree with you. I
initially thought that the best approach would be to change
PluginRepository.get(Configuration) to PluginRepository.get() where
get() just creates a configuration internally and initializes itself
with it. But then we wouldn't be passing JobConf to PluginRepository
but PluginRepository would do something like a
NutchConfiguration.create(), which is probably wrong.
So, all in all, I've come to believe that my (and Nicolas') patch is a
not-so-bad way of fixing this. It allows us to pass JobConf to
PluginRepository and stops creating new PluginRepository-s again and
again...
What do you think?
IMO a better way would be to add a proper equals() method to Hadoop's
Configuration object (and hashcode) that would call
getProps().equals(o.getProps()). So that you could use them as keys...
Every class which is a map from keys to values has "equals & hashcode"
(Properties, HashMap, etc.).
Another nice thing would be to be able to "freeze" a configuration
object, preventing anyone from modifying it.
